99. Considering Genius, Jazz & the Sublime with Robert Menafee

[00:00:10] What's up and welcome back to Real Ballers Read.

[00:00:14] As always, we're here with a very special guest today.

[00:00:17] This one is particularly special, though, because he is the foundation

[00:00:21] of our livelihoods right now.

[00:00:24] He is our father, Robert Menafee.

[00:00:27] This is the man who put the books and the balls in our hand

[00:00:31] to travel the world and explore and learn and grow together.

[00:00:37] So, Daddy, we're so grateful to have you on the show today.

[00:00:40] Hey, Jan. Hey, Miles.

[00:00:42] I'm glad to be here. Glad to be a real privilege.

[00:00:47] Thank you. Yeah.

[00:00:48] Like what you said that moment ago, you know, I was thinking about

[00:00:52] I was with what is it?

[00:00:54] He got gay. Right.

[00:00:56] Oh, yeah.

[00:00:57] I put the ball in your crib.

[00:00:59] Yeah, right. Exactly.

[00:01:01] Exactly. So much inspiration from you for just like,

[00:01:05] yeah, everything about our lives.

[00:01:06] And this is a long time coming specifically with the podcast,

[00:01:10] given that we've had close to 100 conversations

[00:01:14] with a lot of different folks, very like the intellectual

[00:01:19] transformational conversations all the way to come back to talking to you,

[00:01:23] which is really exciting. So,

[00:01:26] yeah, by way of welcoming as well,

[00:01:30] you know, the book that we decided to talk about today is

[00:01:32] Considering Genius by Stanley Crouch.

[00:01:35] So, Daddy, if you could please share the first time that you found this book

[00:01:40] and why you liked it.

[00:01:42] Oh, gosh.

[00:01:45] Probably the book is published.

[00:01:48] I have a crotomy. The book is published.

[00:01:52] In 2000, it's.

[00:01:56] So I think, you know, maybe 2008, 2009, 2010.

[00:02:03] Somewhere in that time frame.

[00:02:04] And I may have at the time, I may have been living and working in Boston.

[00:02:11] If I recall correctly, I can't honestly,

[00:02:14] but less played it in that time frame.

[00:02:16] And then it's a it's a book Stanley Crouch's essays.

[00:02:22] And about, you know, different jazz artists,

[00:02:26] Miles Davis, Duke Gallenton, Louis Armstrong,

[00:02:30] Coltrane, so on and such like it. And I.

[00:02:35] I like Crouch's writing style.

[00:02:40] And I also like essays.

[00:02:41] I mean, it's hard to describe because I can read a full book.

[00:02:46] But essays are cool because they're compact.

[00:02:54] So the time and then what else?

[00:02:56] You asked one song.

[00:02:57] Oh, just why you liked it, which you would.

[00:03:00] Yeah, I love so I love I love jazz.

[00:03:04] You know, in the late 80s, 89, then early 90s, 91.

[00:03:12] I actually started I actually started I couldn't tell you how it happened.

[00:03:16] I just got some records, got some music from the library.

[00:03:19] Some of that music was Miles Davis, like his more recent stuff

[00:03:24] in that time frame. I think the album was a man.

[00:03:27] The one that stands out for me.

[00:03:31] And I was listening to some Charlie Parker and Diz Gillespie and Monk

[00:03:36] and, you know, Bebop, 90s Tunisia.

[00:03:40] So I and then in 93, you know, on the social class of 90 at Stanford

[00:03:45] and in 93 when I got back to finish, I stopped out

[00:03:50] to get to grow up, to mature, to get my time management together.

[00:03:55] But when I went back in 93,

[00:03:59] this is in the window of time, right, when you could

[00:04:02] the old fashioned style of trying to get into a class.

[00:04:06] And so I had gone to this jazz class, which I wasn't able to get in.

[00:04:10] But that first day,

[00:04:13] the instructor played so what?

[00:04:17] Kind of blue album.

[00:04:18] And, you know, that week, I went to the record store

[00:04:22] and got kind of blue.

[00:04:24] And it's just been a deep dive with jazz ever since.

[00:04:30] And obviously, right, like I named your brother.

[00:04:33] I named Miles Miles for Miles Davis, though.

[00:04:38] And I think I've said before, like up

[00:04:41] up until that point in time, Papa, your grandfather,

[00:04:45] my father was, I mean, this.

[00:04:49] So every I like Clint Eastwood because Papa like Clint Eastwood, I like.

[00:04:54] Abdul Jabbar because Papa liked Abdul Jabbar, I like

[00:04:58] Mohammed Ali because and I I'm not saying it's bad,

[00:05:01] but like very good thing.

[00:05:03] Yeah, the best of things.

[00:05:05] But Miles Davis and jazz was really sort of the first thing that

[00:05:10] I selected on my own without much info from Papa.

[00:05:15] Mm hmm. So the book is just great collection of essays on

[00:05:20] Vikram Jansharni.

[00:05:21] Mm hmm.

[00:05:22] Had you ever read a book on jazz before this one?

[00:05:27] Oh, honestly, I'm not sure because the other books

[00:05:31] to stand out for me is one called So What by I want to say the authors,

[00:05:35] John's Svedd.

[00:05:37] Um, and I've read a some of Robin DG Kelly's book on Monk,

[00:05:43] but I can't remember the order, the sequence.

[00:05:45] Yeah, right.

[00:05:47] I can't remember the sequence. Right.

[00:05:49] Yeah, no, I was just asking because even reading

[00:05:52] Considering Genius Now, it's so interesting how Stanley Crouch,

[00:05:56] like he clearly know he writes and he knows what he's talking about.

[00:06:00] You know, he also is writing in a way where he's like,

[00:06:03] yeah, this is the first book you've ever read on jazz.

[00:06:06] Like, you know, just something about the so like declarative and.

[00:06:11] Yeah. And, you know, just sharp.

[00:06:14] He's just really sharp in his writing.

[00:06:17] Yes. He does a great job like explaining things, you know,

[00:06:20] where it's like he's really using some great music vocab words.

[00:06:24] Yeah. Yeah.

[00:06:26] It's still accessible, you know.

[00:06:27] Yes. Yeah.

[00:06:29] So now that's the other thing, right?

[00:06:30] Like again, what I think that in the most practical,

[00:06:33] we say accessible, not just the content, but I was saying,

[00:06:37] So like, like I could pick up the so what book and flip through it

[00:06:41] and try to find something.

[00:06:43] But it's like it's a it's a whole book, right?

[00:06:45] Whereas Consider Genius is essays.

[00:06:47] And so I can go to a particular essay

[00:06:51] and get something from that essay

[00:06:55] as opposed to trying to find a particular place in a.

[00:06:59] Overall book.

[00:07:00] Mm hmm. So that's that's what I'm saying is essays.

[00:07:03] I can make reference to it almost any time I want.

[00:07:06] And then I think the other thing that stands out, you know,

[00:07:08] I don't know which ones, but meaning which essays. But

[00:07:13] one of the things that interested me was not just

[00:07:16] his description with.

[00:07:19] Of the music.

[00:07:21] But like somewhere he talks about often how

[00:07:26] so-called white intellectuals never really engage

[00:07:29] the development of jazz and that always I was like, Oh, OK.

[00:07:32] That's interesting. That's interesting.

[00:07:35] And now how someone like Ralph Ellison.

[00:07:40] Had indeed done that right.

[00:07:44] You know, taking jazz as a platform

[00:07:47] or something that was to be considered or seriously intellectual.

[00:07:52] Crouch talks about how that's not really been done in in America.

[00:07:58] Mm hmm.

[00:07:59] Now, I think it's really interesting that you talked about,

[00:08:03] you know, influences that Papa gave to you,

[00:08:07] because that was exactly what I took note of

[00:08:11] in thinking about how you gave us,

[00:08:13] you know, these jazz men, you know, as influences

[00:08:17] and how even the jazzmen, too, it was interesting in the book

[00:08:22] who they love to as role models with Miles Davis

[00:08:26] saying like Sugar Ray,

[00:08:29] Sugar Ray Robinson. Exactly. Yeah.

[00:08:31] And, you know, I want to ask you, like, what was it about jazz

[00:08:37] that like no music could do both for your conception of music

[00:08:41] and manhood, you know, in general?

[00:08:46] Oh, gosh. Oh.

[00:08:49] Words like words like smooth.

[00:08:53] And elegant.

[00:08:56] And cool.

[00:09:02] You know, back to Papa.

[00:09:05] Papa was playing Bill Gates when Papa was playing cool

[00:09:09] and you see moving around the table.

[00:09:12] He was elegant.

[00:09:15] And and so, you know, I mean, I know, you know,

[00:09:19] but, you know, Papa was was the model of manhood for me.

[00:09:26] Not that there were other models, but he was the primary. Right.

[00:09:30] So he was just elegant, let's say.

[00:09:32] And almost everything he did, but like it really,

[00:09:35] really came across when he's playing a fool. Right.

[00:09:39] Jazz gives me that feeling.

[00:09:41] Of watching Papa play pool.

[00:09:48] Jazz gives me that feeling when I listen to you guys

[00:09:51] interview folks on this show.

[00:09:53] You know, so and, you know, I don't

[00:09:56] I don't know. I'd like to think, you know, I'd like now,

[00:09:59] interestingly enough, also, I mean, I know, you know, I'm adopted. Right.

[00:10:03] So my biological father was a upright bass player.

[00:10:09] Right. And so I think that there's a strong,

[00:10:11] strong nature component to it.

[00:10:16] As far as certain things that I got from him,

[00:10:19] my biological father that I never knew.

[00:10:22] Right. And yet raised within a construct of mama and papa.

[00:10:28] Jazz jazz just.

[00:10:31] It looked to me.

[00:10:35] Similar to hip hop or funk.

[00:10:37] But it allows me it allows me to stretch out my imagination

[00:10:42] and my feelings the most right like.

[00:10:49] You know, you know how I am, but you know, I'll make reference.

[00:10:52] So like like in the first Star Wars, where all we want is training.

[00:10:55] Luke says, stretch out with your feelings.

[00:10:59] Yeah. Right. Or Bruce Lee and the dragon.

[00:11:02] And he says, what does he say?

[00:11:05] Oh, the guy is saying it said they have the most quick stir.

[00:11:09] She said, how did they make you how's that feel?

[00:11:12] You said, let me think.

[00:11:13] And he pops him upside the head.

[00:11:15] Don't think feel right.

[00:11:16] Like so.

[00:11:18] And it's hard even on with that said.

[00:11:20] Right. And I'm very much so as an economist, you know,

[00:11:23] careful about using short term emotion, at least with regard to making

[00:11:27] major decisions.

[00:11:29] So I'm trying to be balanced.

[00:11:31] But but there's a there's a certain discipline

[00:11:37] that I'm talking about when I say stretch out with your feelings.

[00:11:40] And jazz embodies that

[00:11:44] jazz embodies that.

[00:11:47] They're I'm sorry.

[00:11:50] This is this is all together different as they call

[00:11:53] it don't mean a thing if they got that grungish thought.

[00:11:56] So this guy by the name of Edward Green and he's talking about Ellington.

[00:12:00] Stop by. Listen to this quote from Malik.

[00:12:04] When I was saying there's a discipline about how this thing works.

[00:12:09] There are still a few diehards who believe

[00:12:12] that there is such a thing as unadulterated improvisation

[00:12:16] without any preparation or anticipation.

[00:12:19] This is Ellington.

[00:12:20] It is my firm belief that there has never been anybody

[00:12:24] who has blown even two bars worth listening to

[00:12:28] who didn't have some idea about what he was going to play

[00:12:32] before he started.

[00:12:34] Improvisation really consists of picking out a device here

[00:12:40] and connecting it with a device there.

[00:12:44] Changing the rhythm here and pausing there.

[00:12:48] There has to be some thought preceding each phrase.

[00:12:53] Otherwise, it is meaningless.

[00:12:59] And that quote, their quote also reminds me,

[00:13:01] structure says line upon line, preceptible precept.

[00:13:06] Here a little there a little.

[00:13:10] So so there's this there's this discipline about your thoughts

[00:13:14] and feelings that I think jazz embodies.

[00:13:20] Yeah. Yeah.

[00:13:21] I was I was thinking that too, just in reading it,

[00:13:24] how like these these guys were able to say

[00:13:31] so much without speaking.

[00:13:33] Mm hmm.

[00:13:34] How their parallels and their contempt contemporaries

[00:13:39] at the time, you know, like really big writers

[00:13:43] like the Richard Wright or the LSA,

[00:13:45] even the civil rights heroes, right?

[00:13:48] Had to be articulate.

[00:13:50] And we're very articulate in a certain way.

[00:13:54] But the jazz men and woman were in a different way

[00:13:59] and almost kind of have more openness

[00:14:06] of like possibilities through what they said.

[00:14:10] Even the same words, you know what I'm saying?

[00:14:14] Yeah. Yeah.

[00:14:17] Yeah, I was just looking in the book

[00:14:20] because I remember reading somewhere last night,

[00:14:22] I think it was on the in the monk chapter.

[00:14:26] OK. What about how like improvisation

[00:14:31] is also a skill in listening because you have to be able to like listen

[00:14:36] to, you know, the people around you and to the situation

[00:14:39] and to your own self as well in order to improvise,

[00:14:44] you know, in the exact same way that Ellington described in your quote, Daddy.

[00:14:47] So, yes. Yes.

[00:14:49] And kind of building on Miles's point, too, it's like,

[00:14:53] you know, you really have to listen to what you're saying

[00:14:57] and you really have to listen to Papa, too, right?

[00:14:59] Because he didn't he didn't say a lot, but he didn't have to.

[00:15:01] And I guess it's like what you like,

[00:15:06] how you have seen your practice of like listening

[00:15:10] or like your skill of listening, like grow through jazz.

[00:15:16] Oh, yeah. Yeah.

[00:15:19] That's a good question.

[00:15:22] I know I'm like I said, I am nervous.

[00:15:25] So I don't I'll I'll say what comes to my mind.

[00:15:29] Yeah. So like Muck,

[00:15:33] there's a song called Well, You Need Me.

[00:15:37] And then it's like actually a very specific version.

[00:15:40] I want to say it's live at the Olympia Theatre in Paris.

[00:15:44] And I've had the darnedest time.

[00:15:47] The Spotify is fantastic.

[00:15:49] Trust, trust and believe.

[00:15:51] But I still have not been able to find Well, You Need Me

[00:15:55] live at the Olympia Theatre in Paris.

[00:15:58] When Muck takes his piano solo.

[00:16:02] What he does is the blind.

[00:16:05] So like there are these moments in a given song

[00:16:08] where you're like, oh, my God, he just he went he went somewhere else with it.

[00:16:15] I mean, still he's contained in the song,

[00:16:17] but I'm saying like the depth of the depth of it.

[00:16:19] It just.

[00:16:21] It just it's it it feels otherworldly.

[00:16:25] Miles Davis on the sketches of Spain album, the specific song, so lay up.

[00:16:32] So probably halfway to three quarters of the way through that song,

[00:16:37] he lays down just a little piece of music

[00:16:40] that again is the same kind of thing.

[00:16:44] It's like, oh, my God, you do that right.

[00:16:50] You know, so there's just like you've got to you've got to be paying attention.

[00:16:55] You've got to be paying attention.

[00:16:59] And and to me, to me, some of the best paying attention,

[00:17:03] but I'm not saying this, just an example, right, a good example

[00:17:07] of paying attention, you could have the music

[00:17:09] all while you're playing it on a Saturday or Sunday.

[00:17:13] Right.

[00:17:14] This weekend.

[00:17:15] And then and then like that, like you're engaged.

[00:17:18] That system to conscious mind is engaged with the cleaning.

[00:17:22] But the system one subconscious mind is engaged with the music.

[00:17:27] And then in those particular moments, like those two examples I gave you,

[00:17:32] the two of them will the system one subconscious mind.

[00:17:35] I'm using Daniel Kahneman there system to the conscious.

[00:17:40] Right. You know, they'll click in those moments

[00:17:44] when you hear that piece of music where you're like, oh, I got to.

[00:17:48] Let me go back a little bit and hear that again.

[00:17:52] It's just I don't know how else to describe it.

[00:17:56] I have to and then you can encounter it any other time,

[00:18:01] however many multiple times after the first time.

[00:18:04] And you're going to get something from that moment of listening to that music.

[00:18:09] Mm hmm. Yeah, yeah.

[00:18:12] No, I mean, so I actually I actually think I found a version of the Well,

[00:18:16] You Need It live in Paris that I just sent to you.

[00:18:20] Well, you did.

[00:18:20] Now, Apple Music.

[00:18:22] Yeah, hopefully, hopefully that's it.

[00:18:23] But we'll see. OK.

[00:18:24] I think that I mean, I was what Mark does.

[00:18:29] And that version is.

[00:18:31] Other world. Yeah.

[00:18:34] And you know, too, I was kind of surprised

[00:18:37] about you finding this book, Considering Genius in Boston,

[00:18:41] because that's like the clearest memory I have of you living there is

[00:18:47] just how much you were playing like Krebs Kuhl, Nelly and like

[00:18:51] like Monk, you know.

[00:18:53] And I remember that you said that even growing up as a kid,

[00:18:58] you used to like take the record needle

[00:19:00] and like put it back to like play songs over and over and over again.

[00:19:05] And yeah, I just I don't know, like every time I get into that

[00:19:10] into that mode with the song, too, I'm just like, man,

[00:19:13] like I know where I'm getting this from because because yeah,

[00:19:16] I mean, you know, you're you're listening practices

[00:19:20] like basically obsessive in a way, you know, and like.

[00:19:23] Yeah, yeah, no, no.

[00:19:26] Obsessive. Well, good, good obsessive.

[00:19:32] Yeah, no, good.

[00:19:33] Yeah, like I'm I'm I'm there's a good chance I'm OCD

[00:19:39] with obsessive compulsive disorder.

[00:19:41] Like I may be.

[00:19:42] But I don't think that I do.

[00:19:44] I'm pretty sure I don't.

[00:19:45] I don't really impose that OCD or other people.

[00:19:49] Yeah, it is for the world

[00:19:52] that I have, for lack of a better term, control over.

[00:19:55] Yeah, like you could see my office, right?

[00:19:59] Right. You know, I mean, I know you already know, but it's

[00:20:02] it's a matter of right.

[00:20:03] Everything is in order.

[00:20:05] Mm hmm. So yeah, so that obsessiveness.

[00:20:08] Yes. Listening, reading.

[00:20:12] It doesn't matter what we're talking about.

[00:20:14] Mm hmm. Yeah.

[00:20:15] Well, it does.

[00:20:16] It does. If it's major enough for me.

[00:20:19] Other things I can't write out.

[00:20:21] No, no, you would be to have that kind of energy.

[00:20:24] So there is a lot.

[00:20:26] If it's not that major to me.

[00:20:29] Mm hmm. No. Mm hmm.

[00:20:33] Yeah, one of the.

[00:20:35] Big, you know, questions I had reading the book

[00:20:39] and just thinking about what I want to ask you, though, was,

[00:20:41] you know, about the blues,

[00:20:43] because I feel like the blues is,

[00:20:46] you know, the foundation for the jazz in a way that I still don't think

[00:20:51] I fully understand and just want to ask you about what you think

[00:20:55] you know, your understanding of that foundation is

[00:21:00] and just about the blues for you.

[00:21:06] Oh, gosh. Oh, you know, I again,

[00:21:10] I'm I'm not old.

[00:21:13] I don't think I'm old yet.

[00:21:14] I'm getting older. But

[00:21:18] you know, we're part of this organization

[00:21:20] called Cap Outside Paternity.

[00:21:23] Some were along the way.

[00:21:24] There's this poem we we recite that.

[00:21:28] That's why I'm mentioning age, because I can't remember all of it.

[00:21:32] But the point of aspect of it, actually, to two forms to one,

[00:21:37] like breathing the other one, the form that victims evict, right?

[00:21:41] My head is bloody but unbound.

[00:21:45] That's one way of describing the flu.

[00:21:47] My head is bloody, but I'm bound.

[00:21:52] Like I've gone through some serious shit for me right now.

[00:21:56] Again, not the same kind of serious shit that

[00:22:01] our grandparents write what we came through.

[00:22:08] And yet for our times and for

[00:22:13] certain aspects of our lives, you know, there's been

[00:22:17] there's been

[00:22:20] some heavy stuff in the process, emotion.

[00:22:23] So my head is bloody but unbound.

[00:22:25] And then another the greeting one, the greeting one

[00:22:30] a particular line from my sense that my reputation destroys the past.

[00:22:37] That's what blues jazz.

[00:22:39] My reputation destroys the past. Yeah.

[00:22:44] Always has meant that like I write I can I can.

[00:22:47] That's again, that OCD thing I can I can remember phrases,

[00:22:52] right. Phrases, whether or not it's a written phrase or musical phrase

[00:22:56] that I can map it, I can.

[00:22:58] That's the gift that the father gave me.

[00:23:00] I can I can map very well and especially map the scripture.

[00:23:06] Yeah. But those those come to mind.

[00:23:09] And then and, you know, back to Miles Davis, right?

[00:23:14] The kind of new album, my favorite song is

[00:23:18] Freddie Freeloader.

[00:23:20] And if you listen to Wynton Kelly playing piano,

[00:23:23] because every other song is Bill Evans on piano.

[00:23:27] Only Freddie Freeloader, a so-called black man, is playing piano.

[00:23:33] You listen to his piano solo at the beginning of that song.

[00:23:39] That's pure joy.

[00:23:41] And that's that's the blues.

[00:23:43] It doesn't have to be right. Of course, there's an element of it that's.

[00:23:46] You know, sort of wailing.

[00:23:50] Sorrow. But I, I

[00:23:54] not that I don't ever engage in that piece of it, but

[00:23:57] I engage in the joy piece just as much as not more.

[00:24:04] You know, I think like like like like

[00:24:08] movie reference, right?

[00:24:11] What's love got to do with it, right?

[00:24:14] Tina Turner, the no more no more blues rock and roll.

[00:24:18] She's I take that issue, the shoe, the sorrow, right?

[00:24:25] Aspect of blue.

[00:24:26] And I think that a lot was lost generationally

[00:24:29] throughout the 20th century and now on into the 21st century.

[00:24:33] I think a lot was lost

[00:24:35] with understanding the joy side of the blue.

[00:24:39] Yeah, yeah.

[00:24:41] Man, did that help?

[00:24:45] Or yeah, no.

[00:24:47] What is it? Why do you why do you what you said something about your own

[00:24:50] understanding of the blue?

[00:24:51] Mm hmm.

[00:24:52] I think it's just like so foundational to all American music.

[00:24:59] You know, and I think

[00:25:02] even the blues as like the musical structure piece,

[00:25:07] you know what I'm saying?

[00:25:07] I think it's so fascinating because it's like out once like that.

[00:25:12] And the overall philosophy and concept,

[00:25:16] it's like literally so foundational

[00:25:20] to everything that came after it.

[00:25:23] And yeah, that's that's wow.

[00:25:26] Because it would it would then take credit for, you know,

[00:25:29] jazz, rock and roll and hip hop,

[00:25:32] which are like the three biggest, you know,

[00:25:34] the info.

[00:25:36] Right, right, right.

[00:25:37] Right.

[00:25:38] Well, it is a highly elastic

[00:25:42] as in a rubber band, as in a rubber band, right?

[00:25:46] It's a highly elastic form of music.

[00:25:49] Mm hmm. Yep.

[00:25:53] The father, the look,

[00:25:54] I said, mapping the scripture when when when the father sent Moses

[00:25:58] to Egypt and Moses said, who do I say?

[00:26:03] Sentinels.

[00:26:04] He said, tell them I am has said

[00:26:09] now what he was saying was what the father was saying was

[00:26:12] whatever it is you need me to be.

[00:26:15] Mm hmm.

[00:26:15] Blues is a highly elastic right.

[00:26:19] It allows for this range of expression that's deep and wide and.

[00:26:25] Like, wow.

[00:26:27] Mm hmm. Whoa.

[00:26:29] How did they how do they do that?

[00:26:31] Right. Right.

[00:26:38] They just they just started writing what writers do.

[00:26:44] Right, right.

[00:26:45] Yeah, right.

[00:26:46] They just opened up their mouth and started saying, I'm not saying

[00:26:49] I'm not saying it like it was easy.

[00:26:51] I'm just I'm not saying it like that.

[00:26:53] I'm saying they just gave they just gave what was inside expression,

[00:26:57] whether it was written or music or or singing or or or

[00:27:03] like I'm an economist.

[00:27:04] I mean, I give I give that same expression in how I teach economics.

[00:27:09] Free enterprise capitalism means you're comfortable when the rabbit has this.

[00:27:14] Mm hmm.

[00:27:17] Skull. You see what I'm saying?

[00:27:20] Yeah. So it doesn't that right.

[00:27:22] You're you're you're important. You're important.

[00:27:24] Mm hmm. And, you know, again, depending on the

[00:27:28] it's so hard of the page to 11 page to 11.

[00:27:32] Like it's only two pages.

[00:27:34] I may want to read that the Negro aesthetic of jazz.

[00:27:39] Yeah, no, definitely.

[00:27:41] You can you can you know if you want.

[00:27:44] OK, here we go. Yeah, I got it.

[00:27:45] I got a taste to a level.

[00:27:49] I'll try to be direct or cut across the field.

[00:27:54] Jazz has always been a hybrid,

[00:27:57] a mix of African, European, Caribbean and Afro Hispanic elements.

[00:28:04] But the distinct results of that mix, which distinguished

[00:28:07] jazz as one of the new arts of the 20th century,

[00:28:10] are now under assault by those who would love to make jazz

[00:28:14] no more than quote and improvised music

[00:28:19] free of definition.

[00:28:22] They would like to remove those elements that are essential to jazz

[00:28:25] and that came from the Negro.

[00:28:28] Troublesome person, that Negro through the creation of blues and swing,

[00:28:37] the Negro discovered two invaluable things with the blues.

[00:28:42] A fresh melodic could be framed within a short form of three chords

[00:28:47] that added a new feeling to Western music

[00:28:50] and inspired endless variations in swing.

[00:28:54] It was a unique way of phrasing

[00:28:57] that provided an equally singular pulsation.

[00:29:01] These two innovations were neither African nor European,

[00:29:04] nor Asian, nor Australian, nor Latin, nor South American.

[00:29:08] They were Negro Americans through the grand sphere.

[00:29:14] Louis Armstrong swinging and playing the blues moved to the high ground

[00:29:18] after Armstrong straightened everyone out and indisputably pointed the way.

[00:29:23] There was a hierarchy of jazz

[00:29:25] and that hierarchy was inarguably Negro.

[00:29:28] So much so that many assume Negro genius

[00:29:32] came from the skin and the blood, not from the mind.

[00:29:37] That is why one white musician brought a recording of

[00:29:40] the white New Orleans rhythm kings to Bix Bitterbeck

[00:29:43] and excitedly told him that they sound quote like real niggers.

[00:29:48] Ah, so the issue was one of aesthetic skill,

[00:29:53] not color, not blood.

[00:29:57] That white music understood exactly what every Black concert musician

[00:30:02] realized upon truly meeting the criteria of instrumental or vocal performance.

[00:30:07] At some point, perhaps even at the start,

[00:30:11] Leontine Price learned that being Black and from Laurel, Mississippi,

[00:30:15] did not shut her off from the art of Schubert, Wagner or Puccini,

[00:30:21] no matter how far their European social world

[00:30:25] were from hers in terms of history and geography.

[00:30:29] Nor did Price is becoming a master, change those works,

[00:30:33] she sang into German Negro or Italian Negro vocal art.

[00:30:38] They remain German and Italian and European,

[00:30:42] but were obviously available to anyone

[00:30:46] who could meet the measure of the music hierarchy.

[00:30:54] One thing to open up, hierarchy has always given Americans trouble.

[00:30:59] We believe that records are meant to be or may need to be broken

[00:31:03] or to be broken free of, which is why along with that pesky skin color,

[00:31:08] the Negro elements central to jazz will rebel against

[00:31:12] soon as soon as possible.

[00:31:15] Martin Williams, the late great jazz critic and himself,

[00:31:18] a white southerner told me once that there used to be a group

[00:31:22] of white jazz musicians who would say when there were only white guys around,

[00:31:27] well, Louis Armstrong and those people had a nice little primitive thing going.

[00:31:32] But we really didn't have what we now call jazz until Jack T.

[00:31:36] Garden, Bix Trumbauer and their gang gave it some sophistication.

[00:31:43] Bix is the only one who introduced introspection to jazz.

[00:31:47] Without him, you would have no Lester Young and no Miles Davis.

[00:31:50] That was the full quote. Really?

[00:31:55] So in such instances,

[00:31:57] Peter Beck ceases to be a great musician and becomes a pawn

[00:32:01] in the ongoing attempt to deny the blues its primary identity

[00:32:07] as Negro developed introspective music,

[00:32:12] which is about coming to understand one's self

[00:32:16] and the world through contemplation to recognize that

[00:32:20] would to recognize that would be to recognize

[00:32:24] the possibility of the Negro having a mind

[00:32:28] and one that could conceive an aesthetic overview

[00:32:32] that distinguished the music as the whole.

[00:32:36] Troublesome person, one Negro.

[00:32:39] Especially one with an aesthetic, the most

[00:32:48] most recent version of the movement to neutralize the Negro aesthetic

[00:32:51] was made clear to me by European 25 years ago.

[00:32:55] He told me that someday we would all embrace

[00:32:58] the idea of a great jazz drummer like Ed Blackwell

[00:33:01] improvising with Asian Indians, North Africans,

[00:33:05] South Americans, Europeans and so on each playing in the language

[00:33:09] of his culture on instruments from his homeland.

[00:33:12] Well, this to me is the jazz of the future, he said.

[00:33:16] It sounded like the United Nations in an instrumental session to me,

[00:33:19] not the jazz that is more than improvisation alone,

[00:33:24] not the jazz that always engages for for sway.

[00:33:27] Blues, the romantic to meditate a ballad

[00:33:30] and Afro Hispanic rhythm as core aesthetic elements.

[00:33:34] If these people from all over the world want to truly play with jazz

[00:33:38] masters such as Blackwell and be considered music jazz musicians,

[00:33:43] they have to learn how to play the blues.

[00:33:49] How to swing, how to play through chord progression.

[00:33:53] Just as Leontine Price had to meet the essential refinements

[00:33:58] of the music to set free the talents that made her things.

[00:34:03] Jazz is an art, not a subjective phenomenon.

[00:34:06] Negroes in America through extraordinary imagination

[00:34:12] and new instrumental techniques provided a worldwide forum

[00:34:16] for the expression of the woes and the wonders of human life.

[00:34:22] Look like what you look like.

[00:34:25] Come from wherever you come from.

[00:34:27] Be either sex in any religion, but understand

[00:34:31] that the blues and their swing are there for you, too.

[00:34:37] If you want to play jazz, troublesome, troublesome

[00:34:43] fellow, the Negro, especially one within a step.

[00:34:50] Yeah. Oh, wow.

[00:34:53] Yeah. Here you get to what's that on my

[00:34:57] or just to hear it, to hear you read it.

[00:34:59] Oh, thank you. Quite a thank you.

[00:35:02] Fine reader. Thank you.

[00:35:04] Yes. Thank you. Yeah.

[00:35:07] Daddy, you know, I'm curious to with this last phrase.

[00:35:11] Yeah. Play if you want to play jazz, like,

[00:35:15] you know, you don't play jazz and yet.

[00:35:21] Oh, I know. Yeah, you know.

[00:35:24] But also, like, I'm curious how you like bring

[00:35:29] exactly this essay and like all that you've listened to in jazz,

[00:35:34] like into your life as, you know, a person. Right.

[00:35:37] Because like kind of to what we're saying,

[00:35:40] there's so many ways to express like the music and the joy,

[00:35:46] the sorrow, the emotion, the stories, the beauty, the gracefulness, the elegance.

[00:35:52] So I'm curious, like how you

[00:35:54] consider yourself like a jazz man or a bluesman?

[00:36:01] The question.

[00:36:05] I think I tend to think

[00:36:07] of. Yeah, I mean, just

[00:36:13] this is no way around it, right?

[00:36:15] I'm I'm always have been

[00:36:19] always have been very spiritually grown.

[00:36:23] So jazz is spiritual to me.

[00:36:25] And in terms of, for lack of a better word, religion.

[00:36:31] Because even religion, actually, you think to me,

[00:36:34] you deconstruct the word religion.

[00:36:36] There's devotion and discipline.

[00:36:37] Those are both good things.

[00:36:39] The judgment piece is where we get tripped up.

[00:36:44] But. Like, I think of life as if you can

[00:36:50] do your very best with regard to adherence

[00:36:55] to a set of rules, right, like, let's say, take a man.

[00:36:59] Then after that, everything is wide open.

[00:37:03] And so the equivalent, you know, like so the blues, right?

[00:37:08] The blues are 12 bar, whatever the naming, right?

[00:37:12] There's the blues or the foundation.

[00:37:15] And then what folks do with it is wide open.

[00:37:18] And so like what that guy would crouch to say to that essay is

[00:37:22] if you're going to say, let's say specific jazz,

[00:37:24] then there's certain things that Negroes innovated that

[00:37:29] you just can't say, oh, I'm a I want to do that,

[00:37:33] but not adhere to the dynamic that

[00:37:38] so-called Negro laid out.

[00:37:40] Basically, all they're trying to say is, you know,

[00:37:42] I teach economics, I'm a political economist.

[00:37:45] And so and even though I don't play the music,

[00:37:47] I listen to it a lot.

[00:37:50] You know, sports, I mean, oh,

[00:37:52] Jabari, Scott Hook is a jazz expression.

[00:37:56] Jordan's turn around jumps fade away,

[00:37:58] jump shot is a jazz expression.

[00:38:03] Henry Aaron hit the whole run in the jazz expression.

[00:38:07] So with me, it really sort of because I've been teaching a little over

[00:38:11] 10 years now. And the interesting thing is that I've actually done a deep

[00:38:15] dive on the history of the development of economic

[00:38:20] thought, let's say from about the Enlightenment period to now.

[00:38:26] And, you know, I've come to understand, OK,

[00:38:29] I'm probably a classical liberal, you know, libertarian class.

[00:38:33] They're not the same, but they're close.

[00:38:36] So I'm a classical liberal.

[00:38:38] I believe in liberty.

[00:38:41] And jazz and jazz, not only is an internal

[00:38:45] like for me, I use it internally as far as helping me process

[00:38:49] whatever it is on processing.

[00:38:50] But then I don't really try to like to think.

[00:38:54] Maybe you guys think differently, but I don't know.

[00:38:57] I don't know.

[00:38:58] I honestly I don't know.

[00:38:59] But I like to think that I don't try to control

[00:39:03] much else outside of what I can control.

[00:39:06] Right. Like I don't once, Jan, I think you are still here.

[00:39:11] I can't remember exactly.

[00:39:12] But when you like when you did

[00:39:16] what's the DC?

[00:39:17] What was DC? Not Georgetown before.

[00:39:20] Siegel. Oh, Siegel.

[00:39:24] You remember what I said to you when you told me about Siegel?

[00:39:29] I mean, you mean like before I went.

[00:39:32] Yeah. And so you don't know.

[00:39:34] I'm not going to get no just because I know what I'm saying.

[00:39:37] I vaguely remember what you said.

[00:39:39] It was something like, like, it's yours.

[00:39:41] Take it like, you know, you know, it was like every every program

[00:39:45] would be like some variation of like take advantage or like it's yours.

[00:39:49] What I was saying specifically was you found that program.

[00:39:53] Oh, yeah. Right.

[00:39:54] I hadn't everything else prior.

[00:39:56] It was either me or your mother or combination there.

[00:39:59] All right.

[00:39:59] Yeah, right.

[00:40:00] We found all the stuff we ever did when you found you found Siegel.

[00:40:06] And so when you did that, I was like, he's got it.

[00:40:10] That's pretty sure this is before you had gone to Deerfield

[00:40:12] or it's right in.

[00:40:13] No, you're at Deerfield.

[00:40:14] Yeah, it was. It was.

[00:40:16] Right. Right.

[00:40:17] Well, my point being my point being I'm not

[00:40:20] I'm not the kind of person that wants to control it.

[00:40:24] I believe in liberty and liberty as long as I and I know

[00:40:29] I'm not going to be manipulative, me and I'd be toward anybody else

[00:40:32] with the father.

[00:40:33] I think the father I don't have a mean,

[00:40:35] ugly body bone in my body toward nobody.

[00:40:38] I believe in justice, but I'm not trying to manipulate nobody.

[00:40:45] I ain't trying to control nobody.

[00:40:46] I believe in liberty.

[00:40:48] And so I tried to raise my children like that.

[00:40:52] I think. But again, I'm you know,

[00:40:56] if you feel differently, you won't hurt my feelings and just OK,

[00:41:00] I'll be like, OK, I wonder where.

[00:41:05] No, it's not.

[00:41:07] Yeah, I mean, for one thing, I think.

[00:41:11] You know, it's just so hard to put like,

[00:41:18] oh, it's so hard to like put our relationship

[00:41:22] to words like that, like, you know,

[00:41:26] a parent child relationship is always hard to put to words

[00:41:30] or like a child relationship with their parent.

[00:41:32] But yeah, no doubt.

[00:41:34] But now I mean, I feel like, you know, whether it was

[00:41:37] whether it was playing, you know,

[00:41:40] so much jazz and music for us growing up

[00:41:44] or all the books that you had like, you know, on a bookcase,

[00:41:47] just similar to this in your office.

[00:41:50] Like you definitely like laid out the whole world,

[00:41:53] you know, in front of us and, you know, really did kind of.

[00:41:58] You know, yeah, I was basically, you know,

[00:42:00] it might not be the best image, but it's like you threw out

[00:42:02] like all the puzzle pieces is all right.

[00:42:04] You know, it's like put together in your own way, right?

[00:42:07] Put it the way that like that, that that looks right.

[00:42:11] That feels right to you. So yeah.

[00:42:14] That's a great.

[00:42:15] You know, I'm sorry.

[00:42:17] You know what phrases I say all the time

[00:42:21] I like to use all the time.

[00:42:22] It's not a puzzle, right?

[00:42:24] So it's interesting because

[00:42:28] like in the technical sense or whatever terminology

[00:42:32] in some regard, it is a puzzle, right?

[00:42:35] Like you got these different pieces.

[00:42:36] It is it is technically.

[00:42:40] Objectively, it's a puzzle.

[00:42:42] It's different pieces you're trying to put together, right?

[00:42:46] When I say it's not a puzzle,

[00:42:49] what I'm conveying is

[00:42:53] how you go about doing it actually isn't

[00:42:56] as hard as you might think it is.

[00:43:00] And it's trusting in me.

[00:43:02] It's sort of trusting in these particular elements.

[00:43:05] And then tying back to what I said a moment ago

[00:43:07] and what pop on in Miles Davis

[00:43:09] was the first hero that I selected myself.

[00:43:12] But I could do that because I have

[00:43:14] I have unbelievable foundation, right?

[00:43:17] Like I had a great foundation in how to assess

[00:43:23] because of Papa Mama too.

[00:43:25] But I'm just talking about like, you know

[00:43:26] the world that Papa vis-a-vis

[00:43:29] you know, he came up hardscrabble

[00:43:34] you know on the West side of Dayton and made it out.

[00:43:40] But you know, just like now I go to cigar lounge

[00:43:43] like there were old school men caves

[00:43:46] back in the day too, right?

[00:43:47] They were just, it was actually somebody's house even.

[00:43:50] There was a guy,

[00:43:53] Herb I can't contain his last name

[00:43:55] but he had a house on McGee which was called Western.

[00:44:01] And I was always under Papa's knee.

[00:44:03] I had this great foundation to then be able

[00:44:06] to launch out on my own in a way that

[00:44:10] so when I say it's not a puzzle

[00:44:13] like how you go about doing it

[00:44:15] you find these mechanisms that help you

[00:44:18] put the pieces together.

[00:44:20] And jazz is one of those mechanisms.

[00:44:24] The blues and jazz and hip hop and funk

[00:44:28] it's one of those mechanisms.

[00:44:32] And by the way, so I won't forget

[00:44:34] Miles has come to my mind

[00:44:36] Jan was talking about a seagull

[00:44:38] not so much academic program

[00:44:40] just different example but again

[00:44:42] so guys this is before Deerfield

[00:44:45] I take you to school every morning.

[00:44:47] If you're up one day I gave you the,

[00:44:49] Miles I gave you the iPod select some music.

[00:44:53] Miles you're like in grade school

[00:44:54] you're like sixth, seventh, eighth grade

[00:44:57] and you selected to play the Ohio play

[00:44:59] or something like what the hell

[00:45:01] or one of those songs off of the fire album.

[00:45:07] I'm pretty sure what the hell.

[00:45:08] And I was like,

[00:45:10] It was, it was.

[00:45:13] So if I hadn't said it before maybe I would

[00:45:17] like in my own mind

[00:45:19] in that moment I'm like,

[00:45:21] oh he gets this.

[00:45:27] So I've said this you guys are,

[00:45:31] Jan you're 27?

[00:45:33] Yeah.

[00:45:34] Yeah and Miles you'll be 26 in the lot.

[00:45:37] So for your age,

[00:45:39] oh my God you guys are incredibly mature and wise.

[00:45:44] And you really sort of always have been.

[00:45:48] Yeah and so no doubt some of that is me

[00:45:52] and your mother and my mom and papa

[00:45:54] but some of that is you.

[00:45:58] I mean you as in the unique expression,

[00:46:04] you Jan, you Miles and Vera

[00:46:07] are the unique expression of,

[00:46:11] right you are my improvisation.

[00:46:14] Mm.

[00:46:17] Yeah but I try to,

[00:46:19] I try, there have been plenty of times when I haven't

[00:46:23] but I try to make sound decisions about big rocks

[00:46:27] and I've probably made just as many

[00:46:31] if not more bad decisions

[00:46:33] but the father in heaven has been faithful.

[00:46:38] And so you know I've been teaching

[00:46:41] a little over 10 years now

[00:46:44] and I don't know that I'm gonna do anything different.

[00:46:46] I don't know that I wanna do anything different.

[00:46:50] You know I'm at a university

[00:46:52] that provides a pretty good platform to do what I do

[00:46:57] and you know the schedule

[00:46:58] and then hell, reading alone.

[00:47:01] Right so I mean you know I think you guys,

[00:47:05] I mean I know you guys, right?

[00:47:07] You guys, you took the reading

[00:47:10] and you took it to another level.

[00:47:15] You took it in all kind of directions

[00:47:17] and to another level and like wow.

[00:47:23] Wow so but anyway.

[00:47:26] I did the,

[00:47:30] I think I did the best I could.

[00:47:32] I can stand in front of the father in heaven and say

[00:47:35] I did the best I could

[00:47:37] to raise my children in a manner of this

[00:47:42] kind and loving, got them ready

[00:47:46] and not just got them ready

[00:47:47] as far as a professional career

[00:47:50] but that to me I'm not saying that that is easy

[00:47:54] but it's in some sense,

[00:47:57] in some sense it's not interesting.

[00:48:01] In some sense it's not interesting.

[00:48:04] No it's not.

[00:48:05] But what you guys, you know what you guys are,

[00:48:08] you're really sort of, you're trying to,

[00:48:10] and that's why again, a reminder, the Psalm 127

[00:48:15] because when I heard it the other day

[00:48:16] I was like oh my God.

[00:48:17] So you'll get it when you hear it.

[00:48:22] Yeah.

[00:48:23] Well would you like to read it now?

[00:48:24] That you were reminded.

[00:48:26] Oh okay.

[00:48:27] All right look but let me.

[00:48:28] Because I need to say it's the end of the show

[00:48:31] but just while.

[00:48:31] Okay, okay, okay.

[00:48:33] Let me pull up my Bible app.

[00:48:36] I don't have like action but I have the,

[00:48:38] I already have it pulled up

[00:48:39] and it's not long isn't it?

[00:48:41] Maybe five, six words.

[00:48:45] Okay, it's pretty short.

[00:48:46] So this is Psalm 127.

[00:48:50] Except the Lord build the house,

[00:48:52] they labor in vain to build it.

[00:48:56] Except the Lord keep the city,

[00:48:58] the watchman waken but in vain.

[00:49:01] It is vain for you to rise up early,

[00:49:03] to sit up late, to eat the bread of sorrows.

[00:49:07] For so he giveth his beloved sleep.

[00:49:10] So this is the next word.

[00:49:11] So I just wanted to read all of it

[00:49:13] for the sake of the short.

[00:49:14] But here's where we really begin.

[00:49:17] Where I was going.

[00:49:20] Lo children are in heritage of the Lord

[00:49:26] and the fruit of the womb is his reward.

[00:49:31] As arrows are in the hand of a mighty man

[00:49:34] so are children of the youth.

[00:49:37] Happy is the man that hath his quiver full of them.

[00:49:43] They shall not be ashamed, here we go.

[00:49:46] They shall not be ashamed

[00:49:48] but they shall speak with the enemies in the gate.

[00:49:52] That's what you're doing on Real Ballad

[00:49:54] with Rudy Parker I think.

[00:49:55] Speaking with the enemies in the gate.

[00:49:58] Oh snap, wait, wait, wait.

[00:50:00] Read that last part again?

[00:50:02] What?

[00:50:03] Sleep with the enemies?

[00:50:04] No, speak, speak.

[00:50:06] Speak, oh, oh.

[00:50:08] I heard sleep too.

[00:50:09] I was like.

[00:50:10] Lo children, lo children are in heritage of the Lord

[00:50:14] and the fruit of the womb is his reward.

[00:50:17] As arrows are in the hand of a mighty man

[00:50:19] so are children of the youth.

[00:50:22] I was in my 20s when you were born, Dan.

[00:50:26] Happy is the man that hath his quiver full of them.

[00:50:29] They shall not be ashamed

[00:50:31] but they shall speak with the enemies in the gate.

[00:50:38] What you are doing on Real Ballad is read

[00:50:40] is that last verse in Psalm 127.

[00:50:45] Wow.

[00:50:46] Accurate.

[00:50:48] Yeah.

[00:50:49] Accurate.

[00:50:53] Man, just the, I mean David, he wrote the Psalms, right?

[00:50:57] David and Solomon.

[00:50:59] David and Solomon.

[00:51:00] David and Solomon, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[00:51:02] So who wrote that verse?

[00:51:04] Uh, I'm not sure.

[00:51:06] I'm thinking about that.

[00:51:08] I'm joking, I know.

[00:51:12] David or Solomon.

[00:51:14] Wow.

[00:51:15] Yep.

[00:51:16] Who is more the blues or jazz man at the time?

[00:51:20] David or Job or Solomon?

[00:51:23] Who was the blues man at the Bible?

[00:51:27] Oh wow, thanks.

[00:51:29] That's really, you know,

[00:51:31] I have never really thought about that question.

[00:51:34] That's a great question.

[00:51:36] I mean, it just depends on how you would map it.

[00:51:39] But when I say depends, I mean, it's not like,

[00:51:43] I was saying there may be something that is like,

[00:51:51] don't get like anything else in life, like, okay,

[00:51:53] like I'd like to think that we said Samuel was like,

[00:51:58] or this jazz artist was like Samuel,

[00:52:00] that there was something about it, right?

[00:52:02] Just not randomness to it.

[00:52:04] But if there's some element about, okay,

[00:52:06] why do we select that?

[00:52:08] Right, Miles Davis is like David.

[00:52:11] I don't know.

[00:52:12] I hadn't thought about that one actually.

[00:52:13] That's a good one.

[00:52:15] That's really good.

[00:52:18] Like, I have never thought of mapping

[00:52:21] a jazz artist back to, I hadn't thought about that.

[00:52:24] Yeah, well no, I just,

[00:52:26] I'm even thinking of mapping the men to the music.

[00:52:34] Okay.

[00:52:36] You know, even though stories are so imprinted

[00:52:41] in our system one sub subconscious

[00:52:45] to where they can find expression later in the music.

[00:52:50] You know what I'm saying?

[00:52:53] But yeah, interesting for us to think about.

[00:52:56] So you said mapping the men

[00:52:57] like some biblical characters?

[00:52:59] Yeah.

[00:53:00] To the music?

[00:53:03] Or that's, yeah, that's how I was thinking about like,

[00:53:06] yeah, which of them is the blues

[00:53:10] before the particular expression of the blues

[00:53:15] in America?

[00:53:16] Yeah. Right.

[00:53:18] Not necessarily like a specific, yeah.

[00:53:20] Yeah, what I would suggest to you there

[00:53:22] is mapping that question to the 28th chapter of

[00:53:26] Deuteronomy and I won't read that.

[00:53:29] Right.

[00:53:31] But. It's too deep.

[00:53:33] Map what you just said to the 28th chapter of Deuteronomy.

[00:53:38] Wow. Yeah.

[00:53:39] In terms of, right, right.

[00:53:42] Like, yeah, black folks created the blues

[00:53:46] and then from that jazz and hip hop

[00:53:48] and funk and R&B and all that.

[00:53:50] I'm not saying that that's not crazy.

[00:53:51] But what I am saying is that, yeah,

[00:53:53] that aesthetic, that blues aesthetic

[00:53:57] goes all the way back.

[00:54:01] No, I feel like.

[00:54:02] In fact, I've also said to you guys before, right?

[00:54:05] As an adult, what I came to understand

[00:54:08] and Crouch's writings in this book

[00:54:10] were hugely instrumental.

[00:54:12] I came to jazz was the primary mechanism for me

[00:54:17] as a young adult through the age I am now

[00:54:22] to understand that so-called black folk

[00:54:24] are peculiar people.

[00:54:27] And I'm indeed using the term peculiar

[00:54:29] as in seventh chapter of Deuteronomy.

[00:54:32] So the aesthetic has been around,

[00:54:35] shall we say, quite some time.

[00:54:38] There's nothing new about it.

[00:54:40] That makes sense.

[00:54:41] Yeah. I love that answer.

[00:54:42] No, that's awesome.

[00:54:44] That's what I was thinking.

[00:54:46] Yep.

[00:54:47] I was trying to ask about, so.

[00:54:48] Yep.

[00:54:49] That makes sense.

[00:54:50] And you know, I mean, you know, now,

[00:54:52] you know, obviously, Moses, Titan, Elijah, Titan,

[00:54:59] you know, David, a Titan, right?

[00:55:01] I couldn't say who I'd map.

[00:55:04] You know, maybe Miles Davis.

[00:55:05] I don't know.

[00:55:06] You know, like something like, right?

[00:55:08] Miles Davis is from East St. Louis, Illinois.

[00:55:11] Illinois, East St. Louis, Illinois.

[00:55:14] Where was David from?

[00:55:18] Where's David from?

[00:55:20] Bethlehem.

[00:55:21] The point I'm trying to make,

[00:55:22] they both from towns that are obscure.

[00:55:25] I'm just throwing stuff out there.

[00:55:26] Oh, right.

[00:55:27] Came from nowhere.

[00:55:28] Right.

[00:55:29] He came from nowhere.

[00:55:32] Even when Samuel, the father sent Samuel

[00:55:34] to go choose a new king.

[00:55:37] And Samuel, they went through all the Jesse's sons

[00:55:40] and they said,

[00:55:41] Samuel said, Jesse, do you have any more sons?

[00:55:44] And Jesse said, well, hell,

[00:55:46] David's out there keeping this.

[00:55:47] It was an afterthought.

[00:55:54] So I think, right?

[00:55:56] Like, I think you guys,

[00:55:59] my assessment outside looking in, right?

[00:56:03] I think if it's not already the case, right?

[00:56:05] Like you guys have taken some folks by surprise.

[00:56:12] I don't know.

[00:56:13] I wouldn't, it's a good, it's a guess.

[00:56:15] It's a good guess.

[00:56:15] Meaning I don't know whatever those scenarios are

[00:56:18] in your own lives,

[00:56:20] but I would bet money that there's a small number

[00:56:26] of scenarios where you guys have taken

[00:56:28] some folks by surprise.

[00:56:30] Yeah. I mean, every time we open our mouths,

[00:56:35] folks don't expect niggas this pretty to be so smart.

[00:56:39] You know?

[00:56:40] So.

[00:56:43] My reference, he destroyed the past.

[00:56:46] All Miles does is surprise people, bro.

[00:56:51] No, I was honestly, I was thinking about that Jan,

[00:56:55] this weekend Jan was speaking on a panel

[00:56:59] and you would know Jan, you know,

[00:57:01] just towering above everyone else on the panel physically,

[00:57:05] but you know, just the dude's aura and presence.

[00:57:09] You know, I was like, damn man,

[00:57:10] this, that nigga, bro is crazy.

[00:57:12] So.

[00:57:14] That's right.

[00:57:15] That's right.

[00:57:16] Appreciate that, bro.

[00:57:18] Yeah.

[00:57:18] We're real.

[00:57:20] And you, again, always been that way.

[00:57:25] Always been that way.

[00:57:27] Yep.

[00:57:28] That's what I'm saying.

[00:57:35] You had a question, Jan?

[00:57:37] Go.

[00:57:38] Question.

[00:57:39] Yeah.

[00:57:40] You know, I've actually never thought about this one

[00:57:43] either, which is what like,

[00:57:47] or how would you teach a class on jazz?

[00:57:50] You know?

[00:57:51] Cause I feel like you've been,

[00:57:52] let's say for us,

[00:57:53] you were kind of teaching an extended class on jazz

[00:57:56] and the history of the world just by being our dad.

[00:58:00] But like, I'm honestly curious

[00:58:01] like how you would wrap that into like a semester syllabus.

[00:58:05] You know?

[00:58:07] Woo.

[00:58:09] Oh man, that would be really challenging.

[00:58:14] I think that,

[00:58:18] yeah, we could do it right, like sequential, right?

[00:58:21] Like about 20 years back,

[00:58:25] a little over 20 years back,

[00:58:27] we were back at Stanford with your mother doing our PhD

[00:58:31] in education.

[00:58:32] Then I took a continuing education course

[00:58:34] taught by Grover Sayles,

[00:58:37] who was the moderator,

[00:58:39] he was the publicist for the Monterey Jazz Festival.

[00:58:42] So we looked at jazz history

[00:58:43] from the late 19th century up through bebop.

[00:58:50] And that was good.

[00:58:53] And in fact, that was great.

[00:58:56] In fact, again, another moment of clarity

[00:59:00] one, I was in that one time I was probably 34, five, six.

[00:59:04] So I was a little around 20 years ago.

[00:59:10] And I was the only black person

[00:59:12] or I was the only black person of my age, right?

[00:59:14] There may have been maybe one or two other black folks

[00:59:17] but they were older, right?

[00:59:20] But anyway, on a break,

[00:59:22] cause it was like once out of the week in the evening

[00:59:25] yeah, six to eight or something like this, right?

[00:59:28] So on the break, we were in the hallway getting water

[00:59:31] and I was talking to Grover Sayles

[00:59:34] and he made the point,

[00:59:37] cause we were now at bebop.

[00:59:39] So 19th century, right?

[00:59:41] So he made the point that the old school,

[00:59:44] the older, let's say not necessarily old school

[00:59:47] but the older so-called white folks

[00:59:49] really like big band sound, Benny Goodman.

[00:59:54] Duke Ellington is big band sound

[00:59:56] but he's so much more than that.

[00:59:57] But I'm just saying that,

[00:59:59] so that what dawned on me, what dawned on me,

[01:00:01] I was like, cause I already knew what hip hop was.

[01:00:04] Aesthetically hip hop was a response to disco, right?

[01:00:11] Like the aesthetically where they were coming from

[01:00:15] was like fuck club 54, right?

[01:00:18] That's what they were saying, right?

[01:00:20] So when he said what he said about the big band sound

[01:00:24] I said, oh my God, bebop was a statement

[01:00:26] against the big band sound just like hip hop

[01:00:30] was a statement against disco.

[01:00:34] So that would be one way I would maybe go about teaching.

[01:00:39] Right?

[01:00:41] Right, is to do that,

[01:00:42] cause ultimately stuff comes down

[01:00:44] to a compare and contrast, right?

[01:00:46] And does the distinction make a difference?

[01:00:51] And I'm trying to, right?

[01:00:53] We all have only so much time.

[01:00:55] I'm trying to find through a lot of digging

[01:00:59] again back to the puzzle, right?

[01:01:01] Like trying to find those pieces that fit together.

[01:01:04] You're trying to find

[01:01:05] when does the distinction make a difference

[01:01:10] in whatever kind of way?

[01:01:11] Cause sometimes the distinction don't make a difference

[01:01:13] but when it does then what difference

[01:01:15] did the distinction make?

[01:01:19] That would be, so I'm always coming back to,

[01:01:21] okay, how do we understand, let's say hip hop using

[01:01:26] jazz, how do we understand jazz using hip hop?

[01:01:29] We gotta have some funk in there.

[01:01:31] Of course the players and earth, wind and fire.

[01:01:33] And I mean, you know, I'm biased, right?

[01:01:37] And I say this all the time, right?

[01:01:38] The only band of the seventies

[01:01:41] that's badder potentially, right?

[01:01:43] I know it's level of subjectivity to it, right?

[01:01:46] But the only band that we could even make an argument,

[01:01:50] a reasonable argument isn't bad or bad

[01:01:52] to the earth, wind and fire is the Ohio players.

[01:01:58] And what were they doing with the music?

[01:02:00] Right, remember the TV one where Marshall said

[01:02:03] James Brown taught us how to play it on the one

[01:02:05] but I always liked to play mine with a skip in it.

[01:02:10] May be the players,

[01:02:13] the players could take that sophistication of elegant

[01:02:16] and combine it with the gut bucket soul of James Brown

[01:02:19] and you got that, wow, it's just,

[01:02:21] but it's still swings like jam.

[01:02:26] It's funky, it's like, oh, like they say in funky words,

[01:02:30] like nine cans of shaving powder, it's funky.

[01:02:34] But it's still getting us feeling like you just glide,

[01:02:38] right?

[01:02:39] Only the players could do that.

[01:02:41] Only the Ohio players could do that.

[01:02:44] So I'm likely to take pieces,

[01:02:46] but yes, what I say is so challenging

[01:02:49] is because like in the course,

[01:02:51] you got to sort of have some things laid out

[01:02:53] in a particular way.

[01:02:55] So I'm not saying I couldn't do it,

[01:02:57] I would just take some time to do it,

[01:02:59] take some time to do it

[01:03:01] and the various pieces that I pull upon, right?

[01:03:06] That could make it challenging

[01:03:08] to sort of bring them all, stitch them all together.

[01:03:11] Yeah.

[01:03:12] Yeah.

[01:03:13] Yeah, no, yeah, it would be really hard.

[01:03:16] Even listen, I'm like, dang, yeah,

[01:03:17] that actually isn't really a tough question.

[01:03:19] I mean, I think too, something that really, really stuck

[01:03:25] is just like in that compare contrast,

[01:03:27] but specifically with sampling as well,

[01:03:29] because like you really do like lay it out

[01:03:32] like a whole tree of like, oh, here's like,

[01:03:36] it's not just like original,

[01:03:38] it's not exactly linear,

[01:03:41] because it is for like the specific sample, I guess,

[01:03:46] because that's the word, but on text,

[01:03:50] it's like, it's going in every direction,

[01:03:51] because any artists can be like sampled by,

[01:03:54] several different people.

[01:03:57] So even seeing how it's all like connected

[01:04:00] through artists that are taking from other artists

[01:04:02] is like, yeah, just a really big part of,

[01:04:05] yeah, how you taught us.

[01:04:07] Right, right, which is right.

[01:04:09] Like my, again, I had unbelievable,

[01:04:15] and my mom, of course still living,

[01:04:17] grateful that my mom's living.

[01:04:18] I want my mom to live as long as father in heaven

[01:04:21] and my mom want to live.

[01:04:22] Obviously, you know, I think that's how.

[01:04:25] Of course, Papa was kind of stoned,

[01:04:27] so it was a different feeling,

[01:04:30] but you know, I had one of the very best as a father.

[01:04:35] And so to me, I always had a really good grasp

[01:04:39] of what it meant to raise a child

[01:04:40] and what that means is I'm not trying to make you me.

[01:04:43] I'm trying to set up a constant,

[01:04:46] overall construct of course, right?

[01:04:48] Like food and shelter and all that basic stuff

[01:04:50] that I made, but then the stuff that we do,

[01:04:56] go to ball games, we play chess,

[01:04:58] we listen to music, we read books,

[01:05:00] we play with toys, we watch sports.

[01:05:02] You know, all the whole range of stuff that we do,

[01:05:05] I'm trying to create an environment

[01:05:09] where you can discover who you are,

[01:05:14] because that's what my job is.

[01:05:16] Of course, the physical biology,

[01:05:19] that's pretty straightforward.

[01:05:22] I'm talking about the environmental elements and aspect,

[01:05:26] the environmental construct

[01:05:27] that allows you to discover who you are.

[01:05:32] Yeah, I'm reasonably good at that

[01:05:35] because I'm not trying to make,

[01:05:37] I will write, you will always hear me say, right?

[01:05:41] Walk up rightly with the father now.

[01:05:44] The father says that you love me,

[01:05:45] they keep my command.

[01:05:47] So you never gonna hear me say something different than that,

[01:05:50] but that's what I mean by there's a foundation.

[01:05:53] And then once we have the foundation set,

[01:05:55] it's wide open for however you wanna do stuff.

[01:05:59] But when I know that I'm dealing with somebody again,

[01:06:03] all skin folk, they can poke, right?

[01:06:06] So if I have a reasonably good grasp of

[01:06:09] that this person back to the religion,

[01:06:11] the devotion and the discipline,

[01:06:13] I know that they have a good grasp of these,

[01:06:16] for lack of a better word, rules, right?

[01:06:21] If you love me to keep my commandments.

[01:06:24] After that, it's wide open, right?

[01:06:27] When you look at the 10 commandments, right?

[01:06:29] Thou shall not do this, thou shall not do this.

[01:06:32] So all I'm saying is if I have a good sense of

[01:06:35] that this person, whatever their skin color may be,

[01:06:38] has a commitment in their heart

[01:06:40] to living life in a moral and ethical fashion,

[01:06:45] the rest is all adventure.

[01:06:48] Let's play this shit out and have some fun with it.

[01:06:52] Talk some shit.

[01:06:58] Nah, I love that.

[01:07:00] Yeah.

[01:07:02] Yeah.

[01:07:05] Yeah, no, I've been thinking about that a lot.

[01:07:10] A lot.

[01:07:11] You know, been on my own faith journey,

[01:07:15] but thinking about how like,

[01:07:20] you know, in science, let's say,

[01:07:23] you know, the biggest paradigm shift was

[01:07:27] going from the geosurgery to the heliocentric model.

[01:07:33] The earth was at the center of the universe

[01:07:36] to where the sun is.

[01:07:37] And, you know, for me, I think same thing.

[01:07:42] It's like when God and his commandments

[01:07:47] are at the center of your life,

[01:07:49] you know, all the other measurements

[01:07:52] and calculations suddenly make sense

[01:07:56] and things can work out in a way when it's you first.

[01:08:01] You know, it just can never.

[01:08:03] I'm.

[01:08:05] That's key.

[01:08:06] Accurate, yep.

[01:08:07] Mm-hmm.

[01:08:08] Well, yeah, it's his.

[01:08:10] Go ahead, I'm sorry.

[01:08:11] No, no, no, go ahead.

[01:08:13] It's his string play.

[01:08:16] It's gonna play out the way he wants.

[01:08:19] And so, I mean, that's regardless

[01:08:21] if someone believes that or not.

[01:08:24] It's hard to describe, right?

[01:08:25] It's just, you know, I think it should be obvious,

[01:08:27] but to some folks, it ain't obvious.

[01:08:29] Anyway, it's his string play.

[01:08:31] It's gonna play the way he wants it.

[01:08:33] So our job is to get on board with how he views our purpose.

[01:08:38] And that's what you just said so far.

[01:08:40] It's like when you're doing that,

[01:08:42] then you're operating in the world

[01:08:44] as a jazz musician, right?

[01:08:48] When you are operating in the world,

[01:08:50] like I'm here to do what he wants me to do

[01:08:55] as opposed to I'm doing what I want to do.

[01:08:58] And that can be challenging, right?

[01:09:00] That could be challenging.

[01:09:02] But when you get to a point,

[01:09:04] and you're never done, right?

[01:09:05] You're never done.

[01:09:06] But as you're moving through life,

[01:09:08] the better you get at,

[01:09:09] I'm comfortable with the purpose

[01:09:12] that the father has for me

[01:09:14] and I'm going to do the best I can to walk that out.

[01:09:20] That's what being a jazz musician is.

[01:09:26] Right, because the father talk about improvisation.

[01:09:30] In my 20s, in my 20s,

[01:09:32] one of the things that the father showed.

[01:09:36] So I'm intuitively good with probability.

[01:09:39] Like again, the father wired me this way.

[01:09:42] In my 20s, the father showed me

[01:09:45] that he controls any and all permutations.

[01:09:50] So permutation meaning like the variety of ways

[01:09:54] that a given scenario can play itself out, right?

[01:09:59] He controls all of them.

[01:10:04] And he can do it righteously

[01:10:07] because all of his judgments are righteous.

[01:10:09] Not some, not most,

[01:10:11] all of his judgments are righteous.

[01:10:12] And so when you're operating in that space, right?

[01:10:18] Or like again, from the beginning of End of the Dragon

[01:10:22] when he's talking with Michel Lin-Mont,

[01:10:24] and he says, he said a Kung Fu artist,

[01:10:28] you're in a fight.

[01:10:29] He said, a good fight is like a play.

[01:10:32] He said, when my enemy expand, I contract.

[01:10:35] And when my enemy contract, I expand.

[01:10:38] And when it's time to hit,

[01:10:41] he raised his fist.

[01:10:42] He said, when it's time to hit,

[01:10:43] it does it all by itself.

[01:10:45] I don't have to think about, it just does it.

[01:10:48] That's a jazz musician.

[01:10:53] And that's what you guys are doing

[01:10:55] with Real Ballers Reade.

[01:10:59] Really?

[01:10:59] Like that's why I said I was nervous

[01:11:04] because you put it out there.

[01:11:06] You put it out there.

[01:11:08] And that takes a lot of courage to put it out there

[01:11:12] because in some real sense, you put it out there.

[01:11:14] What other people think about you

[01:11:16] really ain't your business.

[01:11:20] Now with that said, folks should be concerned, right?

[01:11:25] Like if you don't talk about me,

[01:11:27] I'm not president, you're talking about me.

[01:11:29] Prayerfully, it's something positive.

[01:11:31] If it's not, maybe you should keep my name out your mouth.

[01:11:35] Not for my sake, for your sake

[01:11:38] because the father in heaven don't like it

[01:11:40] when you are acting mean and ugly towards his children.

[01:11:45] But you guys are putting it out there

[01:11:46] and that takes courage to receive whatever.

[01:11:51] But that's why I'm saying,

[01:11:52] what other folks think really ain't your business.

[01:11:54] But people gonna say what they gonna say.

[01:11:56] So let them say what they gonna say.

[01:12:00] What would I say when I was raising you guys

[01:12:03] if I'm paying them?

[01:12:07] I can pay the cost to be the.

[01:12:12] You guys are putting it in the accounts.

[01:12:17] Yeah.

[01:12:18] Thank you.

[01:12:18] Yeah.

[01:12:20] Don't let nobody ever tell you otherwise.

[01:12:24] I know, cause I'm your daddy.

[01:12:32] If anything, right?

[01:12:34] Like, maybe I'm David and you guys are Solomon

[01:12:39] or maybe, yeah, Papa, Jesse.

[01:12:42] But I'm not saying that I'm saying it right.

[01:12:44] Like you'd be like the Solomon took it to me, right?

[01:12:48] David laid a hell of a foundation

[01:12:49] and Solomon took it to another level.

[01:12:55] Yeah.

[01:12:56] I paid.

[01:12:57] Yeah.

[01:12:58] That would be the other thing, right?

[01:12:59] Yeah.

[01:13:00] I mean, so not a coach.

[01:13:03] Not a coach to, you know,

[01:13:05] wanting nice material possessions.

[01:13:09] I have pretty high end tastes,

[01:13:12] champagne taste, beer budget.

[01:13:14] But when you down to the right,

[01:13:17] the residue, the residual of what we said a moment ago

[01:13:21] about finding and operating in your purpose

[01:13:24] with the father, walk up rightly with the father,

[01:13:27] the residual, it just don't happen

[01:13:30] is that material blessing, right?

[01:13:33] That's gonna come.

[01:13:34] It's just gonna come.

[01:13:36] It has to because that's the, God is not mocked.

[01:13:40] What's over the man's soul, so shall he.

[01:13:43] Read.

[01:13:44] Read.

[01:13:46] So that just gonna happen.

[01:13:50] That's just gonna happen.

[01:13:54] But it's that focus and the discipline

[01:13:57] and the devotion around your craft.

[01:14:03] No, that really, that's really inspiring to hear.

[01:14:09] You know, I feel like Jen and I have been talking

[01:14:10] about a lot of this stuff, but you know,

[01:14:13] to hear you say it again in a way

[01:14:16] now just feels even more, you know,

[01:14:24] just yeah, just lights up a great fire.

[01:14:27] So I appreciate it.

[01:14:29] The father, I'm telling you, you know,

[01:14:32] of course you know, Uncle Anthony.

[01:14:38] No, I say when I do something,

[01:14:40] like I'm thinking about the boy

[01:14:41] because he's doing just fine.

[01:14:43] He's a dentist.

[01:14:44] He's doing great.

[01:14:45] He's doing great.

[01:14:46] 20 years ago, it was a little child.

[01:14:48] Maybe he had bought the general practice

[01:14:51] of someone who's actually frat brother friends.

[01:14:54] And he was, you know, let's say struggling

[01:14:56] to not practicing dentistry.

[01:14:59] He's a hell of a dentist.

[01:15:00] I'm talking about the business piece of it.

[01:15:03] We would go to, I'd be looking,

[01:15:05] I'd had gone and looked over his books or taxes.

[01:15:08] And I'd be in my head and heart.

[01:15:11] I'd be like, ooh, listen.

[01:15:13] He say, Rob, come on, let's go lunch.

[01:15:15] We'd come back for lunch.

[01:15:16] This happened two, maybe three times.

[01:15:18] I am not bullshit.

[01:15:19] Two, maybe three times.

[01:15:21] We'd go to lunch, come back for lunch,

[01:15:23] and if you could check in the minute.

[01:15:26] And I'd be like, oh my God, how does it,

[01:15:28] it was a, I say two or three times.

[01:15:31] So it's enough of a pattern.

[01:15:31] I go, oh snap, this just happened.

[01:15:33] What I'm saying is everybody,

[01:15:39] again, the father,

[01:15:40] there is some measure of agency that we have.

[01:15:43] I'm not saying we don't have no agents, right?

[01:15:46] But our agency is gonna be bounded by parameters

[01:15:49] that the father sets, if you will.

[01:15:51] And if the father touches somebody on the shoulder

[01:15:53] and says, go give Jan and Miles whatever

[01:15:56] with regard to material resources,

[01:15:59] baby, I promise you that's gonna happen.

[01:16:08] Yeah.

[01:16:08] The way it'll happen, the way it'll happen,

[01:16:11] whatever those details are,

[01:16:13] the way it'll happen will feel like,

[01:16:17] will feel like how I feel as an employee,

[01:16:21] we're talking about overall in this exchange,

[01:16:23] will feel like that sublimeness of muck on the piano

[01:16:27] or well be, you see what I'm saying?

[01:16:33] Yeah, yeah, I'm right about it.

[01:16:35] There you go.

[01:16:41] Yeah, I wanted to,

[01:16:44] yeah, one of the lasting questions for me

[01:16:47] from this book though.

[01:16:49] Yep.

[01:16:50] Was about Duke Ellington

[01:16:52] because I feel like he's someone who just looms

[01:16:55] obviously so large.

[01:16:57] And I was trying to find a quote specifically

[01:17:01] but because he was saying how like Ellington

[01:17:05] represents the most American vision

[01:17:09] for what jazz could be and feel like,

[01:17:14] there are obviously a lot of,

[01:17:17] there's a lot of discussion around

[01:17:20] jazz being a form of democracy or jazz.

[01:17:25] Yeah, just being the most American art form

[01:17:28] and yeah, I wanted to know

[01:17:31] what your thoughts were on that

[01:17:33] and situating jazz to its content

[01:17:39] in that sense.

[01:17:44] Yeah, Ellington, what?

[01:17:46] Born in 1899, passed in 1974 or five

[01:17:51] and I think if I'm not mistaken,

[01:17:53] because I have read every essay in the book

[01:17:56] but I've certainly read that essay on Ellington

[01:17:58] and if I'm not mistaken,

[01:17:59] he talks about Ellington as like this mountain range,

[01:18:02] out range.

[01:18:04] Ellington and of course a lot of assistants

[01:18:08] from Billy Strayhorn but Ellington,

[01:18:13] one of the top five composers of music in American history

[01:18:17] and of course he didn't actually like the term jazz.

[01:18:22] And then you talked about democracy.

[01:18:27] So it's taken me right,

[01:18:28] like another tool that you will,

[01:18:34] I'm wired this way.

[01:18:34] I was voted most intellectual high school.

[01:18:36] So like I've been thinking about,

[01:18:38] I've been thinking about Du Bois and Booker T

[01:18:41] and that dialectic since I was in my late teens.

[01:18:46] So I'm bringing that up because,

[01:18:48] and then of course, Dr. King and Brother Malcolm,

[01:18:51] I'm bringing that up

[01:18:51] because I understand the reasons why

[01:18:56] meaning even the historical timeframe

[01:19:01] in terms of jazz's development

[01:19:03] and I understand how it got mapped

[01:19:06] and is some sense still mapped to democracy.

[01:19:11] I can't go into a whole lot of detail,

[01:19:13] but suffice it to say that democracy

[01:19:17] is probably not an optimal form of governance

[01:19:21] and especially not for black folks.

[01:19:23] So that's why I would say with regard to liberty,

[01:19:26] I'm a classical liberal or to the extent

[01:19:29] that democracy is going to work well

[01:19:33] for so-called black folks,

[01:19:35] then it would be about our liberty,

[01:19:40] whether it be economic or civil liberties.

[01:19:43] And of course, much of the 20th century

[01:19:45] was about the civil liberties

[01:19:50] to the detriment of the economic.

[01:19:54] And I can make a pretty strong argument

[01:19:56] that you don't really have much in the way

[01:19:58] of civil liberties if you don't have self-sustained

[01:20:01] economic, free enterprise capitalism

[01:20:04] which means you're comfortable

[01:20:05] when the rabbit has a pistol.

[01:20:07] So there's certain, I think in the most even technical sense

[01:20:12] or practical sense of whatever terminology you wanna use,

[01:20:15] my, I favor or lean heavily, heavily toward liberty.

[01:20:24] And so I'm always interested in governance structures

[01:20:27] that promote that and I don't know

[01:20:29] that democracy does that as well

[01:20:31] as folks think it does,

[01:20:33] especially when it comes to so-called black folks.

[01:20:39] So I would challenge anyone

[01:20:47] you will take up that mantle

[01:20:49] with regard to deconstructing what democracy means.

[01:20:56] Hell, even the Greek city states like Athens

[01:20:59] and so on, it was created at the city state level

[01:21:03] at the city state level.

[01:21:05] Maybe it works reasonably well at the city state level

[01:21:09] but I don't know at the nation level, I don't know.

[01:21:17] Yeah.

[01:21:18] I mean like, I feel like jazz too

[01:21:24] or it has felt like democracy has come to be seen

[01:21:30] or known as something where you're only ever

[01:21:36] as strong as the weakest link

[01:21:38] but like I feel like jazz, that isn't the case.

[01:21:43] There's something right, there's some something more

[01:21:46] cohesive and that sums to a greater whole in jazz.

[01:21:54] Yes.

[01:21:54] Just can't.

[01:21:56] Very what I'll say.

[01:21:58] What I'll say, oh, Miles, democracy has a strong tendency

[01:22:03] toward being a zero sum game.

[01:22:06] Right, yeah right.

[01:22:07] That's not what jazz is.

[01:22:09] Right, so like you said,

[01:22:10] democracy y'all as strong as the weakest link.

[01:22:12] Well let's say, let's just pick one.

[01:22:15] I'm actually picking the second band, Miles.

[01:22:17] So we got Wayne Short on saxophone,

[01:22:20] we got Ron Carbone bass,

[01:22:22] we got Herbie Hancock on piano

[01:22:24] and we got Tony Williams on the drums.

[01:22:27] Are we gonna say that one of them is weak?

[01:22:29] Is the weak link?

[01:22:30] Oh my, no, not not not.

[01:22:33] Tony Williams, what 18, 19 years old was bad.

[01:22:37] Right, jazz is greater than the sum of its parts.

[01:22:42] So that's another good way to describe it.

[01:22:44] Democracy has a strong tendency

[01:22:46] toward being a zero sum game.

[01:22:48] That's not jazz.

[01:22:50] Right.

[01:22:51] Nope, hence the feeling.

[01:22:55] The music when it's right, I know you know, right?

[01:23:00] It could be, you know,

[01:23:02] this is the Brothers Johnson that's funk,

[01:23:04] but right, Starberry Letter 22.

[01:23:07] That bridge with the, and he's playing,

[01:23:10] okay, that bridge, sublime.

[01:23:15] It's sublime.

[01:23:18] Like how did they do that?

[01:23:20] There you go.

[01:23:22] Yeah, that's really good.

[01:23:25] Yeah.

[01:23:27] No, I'm just so excited to keep diving into this music.

[01:23:32] You know.

[01:23:33] We're trying to, what we've been doing,

[01:23:36] I think why I'm saying that

[01:23:38] is that we're so misplaced or not even somewhat.

[01:23:44] What we've tried to do as Black folk,

[01:23:46] and I know I know in some sense I'm sort of,

[01:23:51] I'm not trying to speak for Black folk,

[01:23:53] I'm trying to do a reasonable assessment

[01:23:55] of what I see our people as having done in this country.

[01:24:00] And that is we've created this aesthetic,

[01:24:03] this cultural aesthetic that is beautiful in so many ways.

[01:24:06] Ugly too, ugly too, good bad, beautiful ugly.

[01:24:11] But we created this cultural aesthetic

[01:24:15] and that then we have tried to map to democracy

[01:24:23] and or capitalism as so-called white folks

[01:24:28] to find capitalism.

[01:24:31] And that's never gonna map.

[01:24:37] It's never gonna, because the core spirit

[01:24:41] behind democracy and the nature

[01:24:45] of how white folks practice capitalism

[01:24:48] is antithetical to what we talk about with jazz.

[01:24:51] It's antithetical.

[01:24:55] You can navigate it, but you can't,

[01:24:58] it would never be right.

[01:25:03] It would never be.

[01:25:05] And that's what we've been trying to do this.

[01:25:08] And it's not, they don't want it to be.

[01:25:12] They can talk about it.

[01:25:15] Talk is what?

[01:25:16] Cheap.

[01:25:17] Talk is cheap.

[01:25:20] They've been talking about it,

[01:25:21] ain't done shit about it.

[01:25:24] What does Stephen want to say?

[01:25:25] He haven't done nothing.

[01:25:30] So yeah, I think in that and then so,

[01:25:33] but again, like my other phrase,

[01:25:36] this one's more recent, you may not have heard me use,

[01:25:38] but I say free markets and consequences.

[01:25:41] Free markets and consequences.

[01:25:43] It's not just when I say it,

[01:25:44] I'm not just talking about economics,

[01:25:46] although of course, right?

[01:25:48] The language is economics,

[01:25:49] but I'm talking about culture.

[01:25:50] I'm talking about all of them.

[01:25:52] I'm talking about all of them.

[01:25:54] Free markets and consequences.

[01:25:55] You free to blaze whatever path you want to blaze,

[01:25:58] but baby deal with the consequences of that being grown.

[01:26:03] Whatever those consequences are,

[01:26:05] good, bad, beautiful, ugly.

[01:26:07] You chose, right?

[01:26:08] You say you made that bad sleep in it.

[01:26:11] The problem with the culture is that we want,

[01:26:16] we want to be free of having to deal

[01:26:19] with downside consequences of the choices that we make.

[01:26:22] And that ain't real life.

[01:26:24] Yeah.

[01:26:26] That ain't the life I understand

[01:26:28] as a so-called black man in America,

[01:26:33] but see white folks,

[01:26:34] so-called white folks have an understanding of,

[01:26:37] well, shit, if the shit goes south,

[01:26:39] the government will come in and save our ass.

[01:26:43] The government that's a democracy.

[01:26:48] Ain't no government instantly coming in to save our ass.

[01:26:52] Hey, man.

[01:26:57] Not just fact.

[01:26:58] Billie Holiday said,

[01:26:59] God bless the child that has his or her own.

[01:27:05] And I'm not saying that in relation to me and you

[01:27:08] and your sister.

[01:27:08] I was like, daddy, I always got you.

[01:27:11] I'm talking about black folk.

[01:27:14] I got you.

[01:27:17] I got you.

[01:27:18] I always got you, right?

[01:27:19] I always, as long as I'm on this planet,

[01:27:21] even when I leave this planet,

[01:27:22] like I always say, oh, we won.

[01:27:24] I'll be more powerful.

[01:27:25] I always got you.

[01:27:26] I ain't talking about when I say,

[01:27:28] God bless the child that has his own.

[01:27:29] I'm talking about classes of people

[01:27:32] having an understanding of our own institutions,

[01:27:36] economic and cultural.

[01:27:39] And so when you have your own,

[01:27:40] I'm not worried about whether or not

[01:27:42] so-called white folks, what they can do for me.

[01:27:47] They might be able to give me some funding,

[01:27:49] shall we say, and that's even up in the air.

[01:27:52] But beyond just financial,

[01:27:56] I'm not saying it from a bigoted or racist perspective

[01:28:01] either, right?

[01:28:02] That's what that essay was about, right?

[01:28:05] I don't care who you are or where you're from.

[01:28:08] If you wanna get down with us,

[01:28:09] that means you have to meet our aesthetic.

[01:28:17] I'm flattered.

[01:28:18] No, no, no, you're flowing.

[01:28:21] It's incredible.

[01:28:22] No, I was thinking like, yeah, man,

[01:28:24] they'll bail out the Lehman Brothers,

[01:28:27] but they ain't bailing out the Menefe brothers, man.

[01:28:29] We start a hedge fund and do what they did, man.

[01:28:35] We'd be locked up.

[01:28:37] Ain't no bailout, bruh.

[01:28:39] Right.

[01:28:41] That's right.

[01:28:43] No, just thank you so much though for joining us.

[01:28:47] I feel like this was a Hank Aaron home run

[01:28:52] and a Kareem Skyhook and it was Rob Menefe

[01:28:56] just rich and special to be on the receiving end

[01:29:04] of it now and for our whole lives,

[01:29:07] it's a beautiful thing to wait next.

[01:29:09] And yeah, just so proud to be your son.

[01:29:15] Oh, goodness.

[01:29:17] Thank you.

[01:29:22] It's an honor and privilege to be your father.

[01:29:26] Just a little bit more.

[01:29:27] So my mom's dad Henry, his sister Sarah.

[01:29:32] So Aunt Sarah was my great-grandfather's sister.

[01:29:37] I'm saying this because I think it is important honestly,

[01:29:43] but she would say to me,

[01:29:44] like I can remember going up by her house

[01:29:47] for whatever reason back through high school

[01:29:49] and she would say to me, you have a humble spirit.

[01:29:54] And I think that that, I mean,

[01:29:58] I know that to be the case

[01:30:00] because I know myself reasonably well

[01:30:02] and I know the life.

[01:30:06] I know the way I've tried to live my life.

[01:30:09] And in a very practical sense, right?

[01:30:16] I am a bridge between mama and papa and you guys.

[01:30:21] Right?

[01:30:23] And mama did finish high school.

[01:30:26] Papa did not.

[01:30:28] Papa did not know how to read.

[01:30:33] And like I said, he was elegant in everything he did.

[01:30:39] So like this role as a bridge,

[01:30:43] this functional role as a bridge,

[01:30:49] I think the functional role itself is humble

[01:30:59] because you guys are, you guys,

[01:31:01] and I already know you know,

[01:31:03] sister, look at me.

[01:31:09] Just bringing that fire, man.

[01:31:10] Just bringing that fire.

[01:31:12] And you guys do it in a way, I mean, right?

[01:31:16] It's so hard to describe,

[01:31:18] but again, that's why I brought up the humility.

[01:31:20] You guys do it in a way, I'm like,

[01:31:22] wow, I raised those kids.

[01:31:23] You know, like, oh shit.

[01:31:28] So right, like in some regard,

[01:31:30] I shouldn't be surprised

[01:31:31] because I know I'm the one, me and your mother,

[01:31:33] we raised you, right?

[01:31:34] But at the same time it is like,

[01:31:35] oh wow, it's just incredible.

[01:31:40] Right?

[01:31:41] It's very, you know, again, not to,

[01:31:45] it's not a trying to set.

[01:31:48] And even if it is trying to set,

[01:31:50] like making reference to David or Samuel,

[01:31:53] Solomon, Moses, so on and such like,

[01:31:57] meaning setting our story in that context.

[01:32:00] It's very much so like the father with his son

[01:32:03] and I'm talking about heavenly, right?

[01:32:04] Right, he said with these,

[01:32:06] he said he's given all authority,

[01:32:10] power authority, right?

[01:32:12] You know, and even the son, right?

[01:32:14] The son there's all like when you study Christ, right?

[01:32:16] He's always making reference back to the father, right?

[01:32:19] So it's, that's how I feel about it.

[01:32:21] Meaning, you know, that's what I get the sense of

[01:32:25] from you guys and then, you know,

[01:32:27] I'm always like, oh, this is terrible,

[01:32:28] my house is a beer.

[01:32:29] I'm telling you right now.

[01:32:31] I was a faithful steward in the process

[01:32:35] but let me tell you, these children, they fire.

[01:32:38] You know, they fire.

[01:32:41] So thank you, but you know,

[01:32:44] the feeling is the same in the other direction.

[01:32:48] And in some sense more, again,

[01:32:52] you'll get it when you fire, right?

[01:32:54] You'll get that when you're fired.

[01:32:57] Right, right.

[01:32:59] And you'll witness them do stuff that again,

[01:33:03] like it jumps off of you

[01:33:05] but it's their unique representation of it.

[01:33:08] So there's some of it's you

[01:33:09] but some of it is them and you're like,

[01:33:11] how does that happen?

[01:33:14] That's just.

[01:33:16] Thank you.

[01:33:17] Thank you.

[01:33:18] Yeah, thanks, Dad.

[01:33:19] You're welcome.

[01:33:21] Thank you.

[01:33:22] Thank you.

[01:33:23] Love you.

[01:33:24] Thank you so much for listening to this special episode

[01:33:30] with our dad.

[01:33:32] We hope you enjoyed it

[01:33:33] and we will catch you in the next episode.